Anyone seen the video where the police officer says a swastika is not anti-Semitic at a pro Palestine March?

[EvangelicalAboutButteredToast]

I know there are lots of pro-Palestine supporters in this area of the board. If not anti-Semitic then what else is it standing for in this context? Apparently it was drawn on some protestors banners.

It’s deeply worrying. I hope the children they teach are not being influenced or harmed by that hate.

Because everyone knows the river at the top of country to the sea at the bottom means they want to take over the whole country and obliviate all Jews out of country. Don't pretend you don't understand this.

What is needed is for the Israeli hostages to be released. Imagine how their families must feel. It's been so long but they are not forgotten.

The scary part of this is those opinions are held by a teacher and they are far from coherent and just come across as a hate filled rant.to hate a nationality because what a government does is absurd.

Do you know the names of the teenagers who were shot by Hamas when at a festival? I saw lots of dead and shot Israeli teens on TV. One of the released hostages was raped and they were kept in appalling conditions. Many hostages are still held captive. How do you defend that? There is fault on both sides but on October 7th Hamas broke the fragile peace. It won't be restored as long as they keep hold of the hostages. Yet they still won't release them. Why don't you hate Hamas?

Considering it's a teacher.
Substitute the word Israeli to Jewish.
Substitute Jewish for black
Substitute black for Asian.
Would her predujice be tolerated..

This is an extraordinarily ignorant post for someone who claims to lead discussions on the topic with the schoolchildren they teach. I hope the post is removed.

Ok, you seem very distressed by the horrors of the war and that is understandable. I think everyone is. No one wants it.

But this post is based on a lot of things that aren't true.

The Kingdom of Israel existed on that land since the 9th century BCE alongside Judah. It's not a country that never was. There was a bit of back and forth, Jews got banished to Babylon, got sent back to Judah (return to Zion - hence Zionism) rebuilt the temple that had been destroyed. Then there were a number of wars.

Hadrian came along, killed the vast majority of Jews and renames the whole area Syria Palestina.

However, a population of Jewish people remained in the area, being persecuted on and off by various ruling powers in a variety of different ways, often having to display their Jewishness (yellow belt, golden calf symbol etc.).

Other Jews who had left the area get occasionally persecuted and expelled from various countries (there's a map around somewhere, it's almost weirdly impressive how many countries Jews have been expelled from). In the 1400 the Ottoman empire actually invited Jews to return to the area, after they got expelled from some European countries which made a nice change.

There's another significant migration of Jewish people back to the area is the 1700s too. Then again in the late 1800s. Unsurprisingly, elsewhere in the world, they were not being treated particularly well.

Obviously then there is the situation around the Ottoman empire and the mandate etc. and the people who moved due to this especially after the events of the second world war. Then the people who moved after it.

So which ones should "go home" and where to? Many people who live in Israel have ties to that area going back many hundreds of years.

That was an earlier poster claiming that there was only one meaning:
”Because it means that the area from the River and the sea should be Palestine. E.g. the destruction of Israel.”

Ask them for evidence, or present it yourself instead of objecting to my objection of an extraordinary claim that isn’t reflected at all in any reputable source.

I think you may be in a geographically challenged minority that thinks

1. that the top of Israel is bounded by the Jordan river and the bottom the Mediterranean Sea. And
2. they are the only country that is bordered by both the Jordan river and the Mediterranean.

You might want to look at a few maps before claiming to understand anything.

Yes, and the realease of hostages can’t happen without a permanent ceasefire.
Not with IDF kill zones where they are killing anyone they see, unarmed or not, Palestinian or Israeli or foreign aid worker/journalist/medic from abroad.

Here's a list of the teenagers names for you, and others killed.
www.gov.il/en/departments/news/swords-of-iron-civilian-casualties#:~:text=Pongfat%20Suchart%2C%20Thai%20national%2C%20murdered,the%20Gaza%20Strip%2C%207%20October.
And a list of some the estimated 10,000 children killed in Gaza by Israel
www.google.com/amp/s/interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/2024/israel-war-on-gaza-10000-children-killed/

Shame on you all.
A plague on both your houses.

Would it have been ok if a pro Israeli government protestor had projected it, instead? I believe this phrase is also used by the Israeli government.

That seems like reaching. And very unlikely. Or are we to discuss every unlikely scenario so you can prove your point?
Geez.

Is this aimed at me? If it is, please make it clear!

I think you are being very disingenuous in your claim that this phrase is not provocative in intent.
We know context changes meanings of words and particular words shift meaning or become loaded with certain associations over time.
Calling people “geographically challenged “ for finding the phrase provocative is in itself provocative.

From Wikipedia
The phrase was popularised among the Palestinian population in the 1960s as a call for liberation from living under the military occupation of Israel.[6] In the 1960s, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) used it to call for a democratic secular state encompassing the entirety of Mandatory Palestine, which was initially stated to only include the Palestinians and the descendants of Jews who had lived in Palestine before 1947, although this was later revised to only include descendants of Jews who had lived in Palestine before the first Aliyah.[7] Thus, by 1969, "Free Palestine from the river to the sea" came to mean "one democratic secular state that would supersede the ethno-religious state of Israel".[7][8]
Palestinian progressives have used the phrase to call for a united democracy over the whole territory,[9] whilst others have called it "a call for peace and equality after [...] decades-long, open-ended Israeli military rule over millions of Palestinians."[10] Islamist militant faction Hamasused the phrase in its 2017 charter. Usage of the phrase by such Palestinian militant groups has led critics to argue that it implicitly advocates for the dismantling of Israel, and a call for the removal or extermination of the Jewish population of the region.[8][10]

I completely accept that many use the phrase in support of peace but let’s not pretend it hasn’t become a contentious slogan.

Expecting pro Palestinian posters to answer for the acts of random people is just goady though. All pro Palestinian people have in common is that they are against the illegal occupation and oppression of Palestinians. That's it.

This is completely disingenuous and missing the full context though. The question I want the answer to is why the ‘pro Palestinian people’ (as in those protesters who have no family, friends or connections with Palestine) are so laser focused on Palestine, and not elsewhere.

What is happening in Gaza is atrocious and unforgivable. However atrocities are also happening in Yemen, Haiti, Russia, North Korea - to name just a few.

To pretend that it’s just a complete coincidence that the one conflict some people choose to focus on is the one which involves protesting against the only Jewish state in the world is at best naive, at worst disingenuous.

In a weird way I almost admire the honesty of the people with the swastika posters. At least they are open about being anti Semitic.

The question I want the answer to is why the ‘pro Palestinian people’ (as in those protesters who have no family, friends or connections with Palestine) are so laser focused on Palestine, and not elsewhere.
So in your views, you can only protest if you have direct connections to a country? I find this difficult to understand this because what links me to others is my humanity. I protested against apartheid in SA and against the Iranian regime (amongst others) but I am not South African/of colour or Iranian/Muslim. Should I have kept quiet in the face of injustice?
I will be called a woke leftie and I am happy to wear that badge.

@Auvergne63 Not at all - you’re very welcome to campaign and protest on behalf of whatever country you choose.

But you can’t pretend that the laser like focus of some protesters on the atrocities being committed by Israel while not protesting at all against those committed by Russian or North Korea is entirely accidental. Not in all cases - I think some protesters are acting in good faith, but for some I do think it boils down to good ole fashioned anti Semitism.

Why when it is Israel that is the ‘baddie’ is it so much easier to galvanise the left into these mass protests?

I agree. I feel quite strongly that the vast majority of protesters (not all obviously ) we see would not be out there marching if the conflict was between the Palestinians and another Muslim country/government. A huge motivator for many is the fact that Israel is a Jewish state. It also gives them a chance to pick a side...it's like a football match to them. Sad.

But you can’t pretend that the laser like focus of some protesters on the atrocities being committed by Israel while not protesting at all against those committed by Russian or North Korea is entirely accidental. Not in all cases - I think some protesters are acting in good faith, but for some I do think it boils down to good ole fashioned anti Semitism.
I agree with this. No doubt about it but to claim that the majority of protestors are anti semitic, as some posters do is wrong and offensive.

A huge motivator for many is the fact that Israel is a Jewish state.
Absolutely not. A huge motivator is seeing the horrific images coming out of Gaza daily of innocent civilians, thousands of which are children, getting killed, maimed, displaced and starved. It is irrelevant to the vast majority of protesters who are behind the atrocities they just want them to stop and they want the UK government to stop being complicit in war crimes and potentially genocide by selling arms to kill innocent civilians.

would not be out there marching if the conflict was between the Palestinians and another Muslim country/government
if the UK were supporting it in some way you most likely would. I was living in London when over one million people marched to stop the UK going to war with Iraq.

I find it quite telling that the only reason you think people would march in their tens of thousands in opposition to the conflict is because Israel is a Jewish state. Thankfully there is a huge cohort of people who care about their fellow human beings and don't want to see them murdered, starved and their homeland obliterated in this way. I find it quite chilling that you would not understand that motivation.